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by MoonlitRamblings
Summary: In which Emma finds out Regina likes women and handles it badly, but Regina straightens her out in the end (so to speak). "God, if I didn't know any better, with the way you talk about Maleficent sometimes, I'd think you two were exes or something." / "The Enchanted Forest didn't have dating per se, but I suppose we are." / "What?"


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A/N: Not sure why this took so long for me to just let go of and post, but I hope you enjoy.

-/-

"Mal has terrible taste in liquor, most of it is barely suitable as furniture varnish," Regina commented as she moved aside some bottles, trying to find the cider she promised Emma was stronger than the whiskey. "I'd forgotten and now I have to stock all of this, this…"

"Crap?" Emma asked, smirking casually. She tried to tell herself not to check out Regina's ass as she bent down, but she couldn't even resist doing that sober so it was a lost cause really.

"Your words, not mine," Regina replied.

Emma laughed and, as was typical after they'd each had a good amount to drink, said the next thing that popped into her head, "God, if I didn't know any better, with the way you talk about her sometimes, I'd think you two were exes or something."

Regina had straightened while Emma spoke and made a face as she turned to face Emma while opening the bottle she had found, "The Enchanted Forest didn't have dating per se, but I suppose we are."

"What?" That stopped Emma short enough she almost felt sober. "What do you mean?" Because Regina couldn't mean what Emma though she meant.

Regina shrugged, resettling in her seat and taking a sip of the cider she had just poured each of them. "We had, an affair I suppose."

Normally, Emma settled into a careless slouch when she drank, but now she was sitting up straighter than she had all night. "Like, an affair affair?"

Regina merely raised a brow, too buzzed and relaxed to put forth the effort to translate Emma's meaning.

"Like a romantic affair," Emma clarified, still not picking up her drink.

Regina frowned, noticing how fixated Emma was on this and considering the question, "I helped her with her magic and she helped me with mine. She was the closest thing I had to a friend, even after our falling out. But I believe you're asking if we had sex. Which we did. It wasn't really a romantic relationship, we were both damaged and at different places in our lives—not exactly prime positions for romance. But we had fun."

Emma's head spun. "You, you like women? Like, sexually?" Emma winced at the crude phrasing, but didn't correct herself.

"Yes." Regina's frown deepened and she began to feel rather annoyed at the constant second guessing Emma seemed to be doing, "Didn't I just tell you that?" As Emma continued to stare at her with wide eyes, she found herself elaborating, "I slept with one my ladies-in-waiting as well. I occasionally met up with her during the curse—she's a nurse in Storybrooke."

"Seriously?"

"Yes." Regina furrowed her brow, "Why? Didn't you know?"

Emma blinked, had it been obvious? Did everyone else know and she had just missed it somehow? "Um, no. No. I only know about you being with guys."

"Oh," Regina nodded, thinking it over, she supposed she'd only been involved with men during the time she knew Emma. Perhaps her interest in women was only obvious to herself—not to mention the only woman she'd had any real interest in for a while now was Emma herself. "I suppose it's never come up before."

Emma was still trying desperately to wrap her mind around this new information, "Do you think you'll get back together with her?"

Regina shook her head, "No. We've both changed too much to recapture that part of our relationship."

Emma lost some tension at that and finally took a sip of her cider, then a larger gulp. She almost choked on her third swallow to finish off the glass when something else occurred to her, "Lily isn't like, your love child with the dragon, is she? Because that would be…" Emma couldn't begin to find the words that would describe how crazy that would make her life.

Regina shook her head, "No, of course not. Dragons find it hard to procreate with anyone besides other dragons. If Mal and I wanted a child—which we did not at the time—it would have been hard and would have taken considerable effort. Also, if she were my daughter, I would be trying to get to know her, don't you think?"

"Oh, alright. Good." Emma nodded, glad her life wasn't that much of a soap opera. "Yeah, that makes sense."

"Why is that such a concern?" Regina watched Emma intently, wondering—wishing—what her intense interest in her past relationship with Maleficent might mean.

"It would just be too….too weird," Emma shuddered. "Too interconnected. Aren't enough people related as it is?" The idea that the mother of her son could also have been the mother of someone she had dated, especially given her current feelings for Regina, was just too screwed up to think about.

"I suppose they are," Regina allowed easily. She shook her head, "You wouldn't believe how vexed I was when I finally realized just how many people Henry was blood relatives with in this town."

Emma laughed, "I bet." The conversation drifted back to more normal topics, but Emma's thoughts never strayed far from what she had just learned about Regina.

-x-x-x-

The previous night, Regina had swallowed down her disappointment with an extra glass of cider when Emma didn't say anything further in response to her apparent revelation. Her hope was quickly shoved down when it became clear that despite Emma finding out about her sexuality, it hadn't prompted any sort of reciprocal confession. Instead, Regina figured it simply didn't matter to the younger woman and that everything would be business as usual come the morning.

Regina was wrong.

Emma seemed normal enough that morning, if in a hurry as she left without staying for breakfast, but since Emma was perpetually forgetting about commitments with her parents and Regina herself—never mind anything work related—she had shrugged it off.

Even when Emma canceled on their lunch plans, she had believed her excuse of work getting in the way. Storybrooke's youth were always choosing inconvenient times to skip school or summon magical creatures.

It wasn't until Henry told her Wednesday that Emma couldn't make it to their family dinner that she had begun to suspect something was off. Frowning and hurt that Emma was using Henry as a go between instead of telling her herself, Regina realized she hadn't seen Emma at all this week—a most unusual occurrence.

When it was time for lunch Thursday, she was unsurprised that the blonde had made an excuse and bailed on her once again. Even more telling was the way she had positively fled Granny's later that evening when Regina walked in.

Emma Swan was avoiding her—and Regina was not going to stand for it. When Henry asked if he could go camping with his grandparents Friday night, Regina knew she had the perfect opportunity to confront Emma.

-x-x-x-

"Hello, Miss Swan." Regina said, flashing a dangerous, mayoral smile when Emma opened the door to her apartment.

Emma cursed herself for not having checked who was at the door before opening it. "Regina! Hey, um… What are you doing here?"

"We need to talk," Regina's gaze was focused and stern with a hint of fire.

Emma resisted the urge to gulp under the fierce woman's stare, "Look, I'm really busy—"

"Did you think I wouldn't notice you were avoiding me?" Regina accused, cutting her off. "You don't have a shift at the station, Henry is camping with your parents. We are going to talk."

Emma sighed, "Fine. Do you want to—?" She opened the door a bit more and Regina didn't need any more of an invitation to stride in to her apartment.

Regina looked around, as if checking that Emma didn't have anyone over or any obvious actual plans even though she was fairly certain Emma had been making that up. She raised a brow at the open bottle of vodka, but could find no one else.

"So…Uh… What did you want to talk about?" Emma asked, dreading this conversation, but knowing they were probably going to have to have it eventually.

"Do you have a problem with my sexuality?" Regina asked bluntly, causing Emma's eyes to widen in surprise. "Because that's the only thing I can think of that might be causing this behavior. And if so, I must say I misjudged you greatly."

"What?" Emma asked, shocked. She groaned, "No. God, no. I'm sorry, Regina. It does seem like that, doesn't?" Duh, obviously that's how it would come off, she was so stupid. "I promise I'm not homophobic. In fact, it'd be ridiculously hypocritical of me since I'm bi too."

Regina frowned, but gave a sharp nod, "I'd thought so, but I'd been rethinking my assessment."

Of course, Regina had known about her. God, Emma had been the only moronic one who couldn't tell.

"If that isn't the problem," Regina asked, frowning. "Then what is?" Emma froze. "What did I do? Are you angry with me about something? I don't understand why you're avoidance of me."

The completely lost look on the other woman's face broke Emma's heart. Could she have handled this any worse? Of course, that's how Regina would interpret this. Maybe before Regina would have pushed all her emotions into anger, yelling at her, but now Regina finally trusted her enough to show that she was hurt by Emma's avoidance of her. Emma had asked for friendship, she'd gotten it, and now she was being a horrible friend. "You didn't do anything."

"Then what's going on?" Finally some frustration crept into Regina's voice. "I know I'm not imagining it. You've canceled or run away any time we would have seen each this whole week."

"I know, I know. You're not wrong. I just…" Emma ran her fingers through her hair before taking a deep breath. "Here's the thing, I like you." Emma could see Regina's brow furrowing and that she wasn't getting it, so Emma clarified, "—like, romantically." _There we go,_ Emma thought as Regina's eyes widened.

Emma plowed on, pacing slightly in front of Regina due to her nerves making her feel like she was going to jump out of her skin. "And I know you don't like me like that," she reassured the other woman, "But I always told myself that you just didn't like women and so you couldn't like me back. That made the whole thing more, I don't know, bearable? It's not that I wasn't good enough or whatever for you, I just wasn't your type." Emma gave Regina a small, painful smile at that.

Her smile vanished as she continued to explain, "But now I know that you do like women, hell, you even like blondes. That means I have to own up to the fact that you just don't like _me_. And none of this is your fault, obviously—completely my fault for living in denial. But I just need some time to deal with it. On my own. Some space." She tried to give the other woman a smile.

"You're an idiot," Regina said flatly, an unreadable look in her eyes.

"Hey—!" Emma started to protest before she was cut off by full, red lips. Her eyes widened before slipping shut, giving herself over to Regina's kiss. God, Regina was a good kisser, Emma thought as her own hands landed on Regina's waist. Emma groaned lightly as one of Regina's hands buried itself in her hair and Regina took that chance to slip her tongue into Emma's mouth.

They didn't pulled apart until they had to, already too addicted to the taste and feel of the other. When they did, Emma was panting as her forehead leaned against Regina's. Her mind was still spinning from that kiss, from the feeling of Regina's body pressed against her, from Regina's hands running up and down her back, simultaneously soothing and sending heat through her. Consequently, all she managed to say was, "That camping trip is overnight, isn't it?"

Regina's eyes lit up and twinkled mischievously at her, "Yes." The older woman brushed some of Emma's hair behind her ear, "Do you have any plans for the rest of the evening, Miss Swan?"

"I do now," Emma said, eager and decisive as she pulled Regina into another heated kiss.

-/-

A/N: This is one of my efforts to actually finish off some of the tens of oneshots I have started and saved on my computer. Hope you liked it! Thanks for reading! Reviews and favorites and follows are as wonderful as always!


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